Past Seminars

The sudden appearance of Generative AI has precipitated a panic among some educators while prompting qualified enthusiasm from others. Under this umbrella term are a range of technologies for the creation and of computer-generated text, image, and other digitized media. This presentation reports on an application of Generative AI in the CGScholar platform, a community knowledge sharing and e-learning platform developed by researchers in the College of Education at the University of Illinois and Common Ground Research Networks. The presentation explores the intrinsic limits of Generative AI, bound as it is to language corpora and their textual representation through binary notation. Within these limits, we suggest the range of emerging and potential applications of Generative AI in education.

The dynamic nature of the development of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies such as machine translation and generative AI is transforming language teaching into a field where traditional teaching methods intersect with rapidly evolving digital tools. These shifts bring to the forefront the need to identify how learners can make the most of these tools maintaining sound ethical and pedagogical practices. Based on data collected from a study of EFL learners in Japan, this presentation explores how learners engage with these technologies and how teachers can guide their learners to sound practices, The presentation explores the roles that the teacher needs to play in leading learners to use technologies in a self-regulated manner, and argues for the importance of emphasising the roles of instructor guidance and peer collaboration. An underlying need made clear is the need for open dialogue between teachers and learners and the need to provide clear guidelines to help support learners in using the tools.

Considering the history of the spread of English around the world, issues of linguistic imperialism and the cultural politics of language education have been discussed for a few decades now (Pennycook, 2017; Phillipson, 2009). Contemporary policies of promoting English by English-speaking countries beyond their borders have also been occasionally examined (Mirhosseini & Babu, 2020; Tupas & Tabiola, 2017). However, the actual implementation of these international policies seems to remain underexplored. Therefore, aiming to investigate one instance of the implementation of such policies of English language teaching, we explored the English Access Microscholarship Program (ACCESS) in the context of Morocco, where the program was designed “for students to gain an appreciation for American culture” (US Department of State’s Evaluation of the ACCESS Program, 2007, p. 2). This qualitative study was guided by two research questions: 1) What were the cultural elements imparted by the ACCESS program? and 2) What were the participants’ reactions to the program’s cultural contents in this context? To understand the experiences of Moroccan stakeholders involved with the program, we conducted interviews with three students, two teachers, and one administrator. Qualitative analysis of the interview data showed various aspects of the American culture embedded in these programs as well as a range of these participants’ perceptions and responses to the possible sociocultural influences of ACCESS. On this basis, we discuss cultural awareness that may be needed for audiences of such programs and for larger groups of English language policy makers, teachers, and learners worldwide.

In many L2 writing classrooms, teachers spend a massive amount of time responding to student writing. A large number of them adopt conventional feedback practices, marking student writing laboriously with much attention paid to errors, and dominating the feedback process without sharing responsibility with students. Despite the time and energy spent on written feedback, teachers themselves often feel that their efforts do not pay off as students continue to exhibit the same problems in writing. What’s worse, students lose motivation and confidence in writing and remain passive in the writing classroom. In this talk, I examine the “why”, “what” and “how” of feedback In L2 writing classrooms, and discuss how feedback can be used to motivate students and empower them to take greater responsibility for learning in writing. I also explore how technological and AI tools can be leveraged to maximize student engagement during the feedback process.

Registration Link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfyBBVV5FefRbtJK8BB6lqk2261RSYQGdOz_gBJzj-aSKeeCw/viewform?usp=sf_link

Time: 12:30-14:00, 24 May, 2024

Agenda:

Talk 1: Designing learning with multimodality, Victor Lim

Talk 2: Designing assessment with multimodality, George Jiang

Discussion: Yuen Yi Lo

Registration Link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdtpI-jwNeEJUjqFzbOOBo2QUguzwh19sA8Ynxczfh_LKs2TQ/viewform?usp=sf_link

Talk 1: Designing Learning with Multimodality (by Prof. Fei Victor Lim)

This talk reflects on the applications of multimodality on learning and maps the terrain by introducing three dimensions – multimodality for learning, multimodality as learning and multimodality in learning. Multimodality for learning involves the use of multimodal resources to support language and subject content learning, in recognition of the multimodal nature of disciplinary knowledge representations. Multimodality as learning extends literacy beyond language, with a focus on multimodal meaning-making in the development of students’ multimodal literacy skills as well as assessing students’ multimodal literacy and evaluating their artefacts. Multimodality in learning focuses on teachers’ orchestration of multimodal resources in the classroom as embodied teaching. It also includes studies on the multimodal critical discourse analysis of classroom resources as well as the use of multimodal learning analytics and artificial intelligence for analysing students’ signs of learning and measuring engagement in the learning process. I will discuss the areas for potential research to advance the field in relation to the three dimensions of multimodality and learning.

Talk 2: Designing Assessment with Multimodality (by Prof. Lianjiang Jiang)

Despite the increasing popularity of translanguaging as an instructional strategy and the ascending linguistic and cultural diversity in CLIL classrooms, content assessment remains monolingual and monomodally carried out in written language. There is a critical need to explore how translanguaging assessment can be designed and enacted through assessment innovations. This talk explores innovative use of digital multimodal composing (DMC) as translanguaging assessment in CLIL classrooms and the pertinent practical issues of validity, reliability, and manageability associated with such innovation.